Years ago, when they felt lost, aimless and leaning too much on their vices, Edgar Fabián Frías cast a spell on themselves. As part of the process, the Los Angeles-based artist, therapist and magic practitioner decided to draw a tarot card and get whatever they chose tattooed on their arm.
As luck would have it (or the universe), Frías pulled out the Strength card. Since then, they have had a line drawing of a female figure leaning comfortably against a large orangutan on their left bicep. “Strength” is written in blue ink below the image. (The traditional Strength card usually depicts a lion rather than an orangutan, but in tarot everything is open to interpretation.)
“It helped me on my healing journey and I find that the card often connects with people who are trying to recover or find themselves,” Frias said. “It's like an angel or a guide who arrives at the right time.”
If you too feel like you could use some Force energy in your life, you're in luck. Tarot practitioners say that the Strength card is the card of the year 2024. This is because 2+0+2+4=8, and Strength is the eighth card in most modern English tarot decks. Like honoring the seasonal rhythms of the year or the phases of the moon, working with the chart of the year can be a way to frame and contextualize a specific period of time.
“When we talk about the card of the year, we can think about what energies associated with it can help guide us or support us or potentially give us some clues about the theme of the year,” said author and artist Sarah Faith Gottesdiener. who also runs tarot workshops.
For example, in 2023, a Chariot card year, Eliza Swann, founder of the Golden Dome School, a mystery school for artists with branches in New York and Los Angeles, moved house four times. (The Chariot card is traditionally associated with movement and momentum.)
“I've never had a crazier touching moment,” Swann said. “And I thought, 'Well, it's a Chariot year.' “It helped me see this crazy movement as having a mythical framework.”
For Frías, the Chariot year of 2023 was an invitation to contemplate the direction of their life, where they were headed, and the parts of their life where they did not feel empowered or in control. In this year of Strength, plan to think about ways to receive, invoke, and cultivate strength to make big changes.
“It's about turning towards ourselves and opening our hearts,” Frías said. “Some call it the union of the conscious and the unconscious.”
In the most popular and iconic tarot deck, known as Rider-Waite-Smith and first published in 1910, the Strength card depicts a woman in a long white dress leaning over a lion with its tail between her legs. An infinity sign floats above her head, suggesting that she could be a divine figure, and she appears to be gently pressing to close the lion's mouth and calm it. The lion radiates wild energy, but looks at her with something akin to confidence. The woman is serene and fearless.
The divinatory meaning of the card is “power, energy, action, courage and magnanimity,” according to the little white book that accompanies the deck.
When the card is reversed (meaning it appears upside down in a spread), it means “abuse of power, despotism, weakness, and discord.” But most tarot readers say the card's imagery suggests a broader, more expansive interpretation.
For Gottesdiener, the letter is a reminder that strength is often gentle and unforced and that we can look at our true nature with compassion. “There's this relationship to animal nature or animal instinct,” he said. “She is greeting this beast, this king of the jungle, and she is not afraid of him. She greets him just as she is.”
This could lead us to see 2024 as a year to rediscover desire, pleasure and play, he stated. “Let's go inside to meet the beast. [In 2024,] We will be tasked with thinking about 'What are our true natures?' and 'What do they need to flourish and grow?'”
Swann said the Strength card is associated with Cybele, an iron meteorite who was celebrated as a mother goddess in Anatolia (the region now called Turkey). “I think of the Force as this really beautiful, divine, feminine ecstatic energy — this tremendously sizzling meteor,” Swann said. “And I think of her as the goddess of reckoning.”
On a collective level, Swann sees the energy of the Strength cards in all those who rise up to make their voices heard. “All unions on strike are Strength,” they said. “The energy of organizing and making things more equitable is the Force.”
But the letter also has a dark side, Frías said. This includes feeling overwhelmed, pessimistic, letting emotions control you, hating yourself, and building walls between yourself and others.
“In 2024, we need to listen with our hearts and develop practices that help us cultivate hope, enthusiasm, joy and pleasure,” Frías said. “Especially when it's hard to do.”
If you want to try working with the energy of the Strength card this year, there are many easy ways to get started. Frías often keeps the year card on his altar as a reminder to look for the various ways his themes might appear over the next 12 months. If you don't have an altar, you can make the card the image on your phone's home screen or stick a photocopy on your nightstand. (An image that represents strength to you would also work.) You can also gather friends to talk about your own strengths.
“We are taught to be humble and not name our own strengths, so saying them out loud would be good practice,” Swann said.
And because Cybele's festivities occurred around the spring equinox, Swann suggests imagining planting the seeds of your desires now and watching them sprout in the spring. “On an individual level, Strength is about working with the energy of desire to achieve goals and working with your own strengths, whatever they may be, to achieve concrete results,” they said.
Perhaps, more simply, you can simply meditate on what strength means to you. “You can see where you have to be stronger, look at the divide between what you say and what you do,” Gottesdiener said. “You can also be very aware of where you yourself might be on the card with your relationships and your life.”
The ultimate goal, he said, is to take the archetype out of the deck and bring it into your life.
